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Clay Hearn, Phd, is Staff Mechanical Engineer at Predictive Engineering with over 15 years experience. Clay gained his initial experience at the the Center for Electromechanics (CEM), a self-funded research organization at the University of Texas at Austin. CEM specializes in applications of pulse power, energy storage, and advanced transportation technologies, and as research engineer, Clay worked on a wide variety of programs. Project highlights from this time include free piston linear compressors, fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles, composite flywheel energy storage, and magnetic bearings.

Prior to joining Predictive Engineering, Clay was Senior Mechanical Engineer for Meggitt - OECO in Milwaukie, OR. OECO provides power generation and power conversion products for aerospace applications. As senior mechanical engineer he was involved in thermal management design and vibration analysis of advanced power conversion products.

In conjunction with his time at CEM, Clay earned his Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. His skills include expertise in structural and thermal FEA utilizing ABAQUS, PATRAN, SolidWorks Simulation, COSMOS/M, as well as CFD analysis utilizing SolidWorks Flow Simulation. Clay looks forward to exploring the capabilities of STAR-CCM+, FEMAP and LS-DYNA.

The Predictive Engineering and CAE support teams are looking forward to moving this month. We've secured offices in The Geode, a refurbished and 2-story addition project nearing completion at SE 25th & Division in Portland.

The move is short for us, but it's never exactly easy. And our previous location was a bit of a seismic risk. As stress engineers, there was an urgent desire to avoid the sheer irony of dying in a 4-story concrete pancake with a mocking tombstone reading "They knew better..."

We'll post some more pictures as the sheetrock goes up and the desks roll in.

Our team recently took on a large project involving very large vessels used to treat noxious organic gasses generated within common industrial processes. They discovered we could provide our client with ASME fit-for-service classification via Elastic-Plastic Analysis and Protection Against Plastic Collapse. In this new DBA case study, the team walks us through the procedure, but keep in mind the key requirement for this method is that the high stress region is localized and is surrounded by regions of material with stresses under the yield stress. READ THE CASE STUDY HERE.